Is CoL49 essentially a "blueprint for all conspiracy theories"?

[rich]

Yes. Indeed, there is quite a difference between Pynchon's historical
investigations into real-world conspiracies among IG Farben, the East India
Company, the FBI etc. and say the batshit nonsense of the QAnon folks, say
today.

I was actually thinking about this past week reading up on the Q people. Is
Pynchon still valuable in the age of widespread conspiracy thinking? I
would say yes. I also was thinking this week how Pynchon sees the state of
the world/nation today after writing about it for so long. Is he just
depressed how things have gotten steadily worse or is it one of those I
told you so attitudes as he in the latest works after M&D that moved away
from knotted unknowable conspiracies to more direct critiques of power in
AtD and onwards.

in any case, i'm sure to quote Adam Curtis, today all feels like being
trapped in the mind of a depressed hippy

rich

On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 6:33 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
wrote:

>
> It's always nice when someone recommends a Pynchon novel. Then again I'm
> kinda sick of being told -  this is going on for years now & could also
> be found in the media coverage about the GR radio play - that it's all
> just a big inkblot test the reader alone can make sense of. Pynchon's
> work is so much more than just an "exemplary blueprint for all
> conspiracy theories" ... & the distinction between sense & nonsense
> remains, in contrary to what the article says, always fundamentally intact.
>
> + Dass Literatur ein ebenso großer Stifter von Sinn wie von Unsinn sein
> kann beziehungsweise dass die Unterscheidung von beiden vollkommen, nun
> ja, unsinnig ist, sobald man ein Buch aufklappt, das in anderer Absicht
> als dem Übermitteln von Informationen geschrieben ist, führt kaum ein
> Roman so formvollendet vor wie „Die Versteigerung von No. 49“ von Thomas
> Pynchon. In unserer von Hygiene-Demonstranten bevölkerten
> Fake-News-Gegenwart bietet er sich an als mustergültige Blaupause aller
> Verschwörungstheorien ...Leider endet der Roman eine Seite vor dem
> erkenntnistheoretischen Showdown./ Und auch im echten Leben bleiben die
> Verschwörungstheoretiker immer kurz vor der Auflösung stecken ... +
>
>
> https://www.welt.de/kultur/article207932295/Pynchons-Versteigerung-von-No-49-Blaupause-aller-Verschwoerungstheorien.html
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>